January 10, 2003
Seasonal story of street patcher, hubcap collector is full of holes
* Potholes are the bane of
many driver's commutes, but
these two guys live by them.
By TOM MOONEY
Journal Staff Writer
HOLE IN ONE: State bridge maintenance workers Joe Procaccini, left, Joe Burrell and Robert Sanders repair a pothole on the Smith Street overpass near the State House in Providence. The crew fill some 20 to 30 potholes a day during the winter. - Journal photo/John Freidah
One day their paths will cross. One day Ronald Young and Louis DeCiantis will turn up on the same cold strip of road, drawn to the same crumbling crater in the asphalt like lions to a water hole.
And as cars whiz by and the two go about earning their separate livings, perhaps they'll swap tales of potholes past.
DeCiantis, who's been patching state roads for the past 18 of his 58 years, will tell of the winter of '91, when the Washington Street Bridge in Providence looked like it had come under artillery attack. "We had potholes the size of your desk," he said yesterday. "They were huge."
And that was the era of cold patch, when the loose, oily fill stayed put for a day if you were lucky before seeding the roadside with black kernels of grit. DeCiantis's bridge battle raged all season.
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Young, who is 32, will speak with reverence of a spring day a decade ago when beside one long, torn scab of pavement on Rt. 95 in Richmond, he picked his biggest crop of hubcaps.
More than 200 of the silver and chrome wheel covers were mined from grass hummocks and scrub. Enough hubcaps to pile to the ceiling of his red Chrysler New Yorker.
At an average resale value of $25 a hubcap, it was a $5,000 day.
"It was like heaven," said Young, who keeps 30,000 hubcaps beside his Burrillville home, stacked like cord wood, the main stock for his business, Hubcaps On Wheels. "I had so many hubcaps in my car I had to use bungie cords to close my trunk. I literally could not put another hubcap in there."
These are the days of expectation for DeCiantis and Young.
The season of potholes is only now producing the first fruit of frustrations and front-end alignments. Wheels are going naked.
DeCiantis's job is to prevent such roadway hazards; Young's livelihood depends on their inevitability.
"I love winter," Young said. "Most people don't, but I do. This is my time of year. People tell me, 'Why don't you go to Florida?' and I say, 'No way. Winter is my best season.'"
And this season, with its fluctuating periods of freezing and thawing - a necessity for any thriving pothole - is keeping both Young and DeCiantis busy
"It's been an ongoing battle so far," said DeCiantis, whose patch crew this week has been filling between 25 and 30 potholes a day.
Some of the worst spots along state highways have been Routes 95 and 6 through Providence and the northbound lanes of 295 from Warwick to the Massachusetts line.
But many city streets through Providence, Warwick, and Cranston "are the worst," said DeCiantis. "It's no one's fault, just the weather's. But there are some pretty nasty holes out there, and if you hit them you go flying."
Which begs the question: Then what?
The State Department of Transportation does have a claim procedure for motorists whose vehicles are damaged by potholes. A telephone number - (401)222-2378, ext. 4817 - operates around the clock. Claims are limited to $300.
The number of broken wheel hubs and the like usually depend on winter's severity, says John D. Nickelson, DOT's deputy chief engineer.
In fiscal year 1997, 541 motorists filed damage claims because of potholes, said Nickelson. Of those, 537 were paid. Since then the number of claims has dropped significantly each year, partly because the state has repaved many of its roads and partly because of the mild winters.
In fiscal year 2000, the last year for which figures were available, only 67 claims were filed, and all were paid.
Potholes live for temperature swings.
During thaws, water seeps into asphalt cracks and saturates and softens the gravel below. When the moisture freezes again, it expands, widening the cracks. Another thaw can depress the saturated gravel, allowing the asphalt to flex and then break apart under the barrage of tires. Thus a pothole is born.
Two years ago, the state DOT purchased a hot-patch machine which allows road crews to fill potholes with hot asphalt. The hot material binds together better, and potholes stay repaired longer.
But Young, who's been collecting lost hubcaps since he was 6 and sold 1,842 of them last year, is optimistic about the season before him.
"With what I've seen so far, I think it's going to be pretty good. Unlike last year, we've had a lot of snow and ice, which breaks up the road when its plowed."
There's something pure, too about Mother Nature supplying the demand for your stock:
"Without potholes, you have to rely on people stealing them from each other."
POTHOLE BAROMETER: This broken hubcap, a sure sign of nearby potholes, sits on the Smith Street overpass where Louis DeCiantis, left, DOT supervisor of bridge maintenance, and his crew make repairs. - Journal photo/John Freidah